Vera Mont

Yes, exactly this. You can imagine yourself in a lawless society... but not where the police themselves are the most lawless element. Yet such societi...

YES. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/ I trus...

When do hear from the author? I'm burning up with curiosity.

I do understand that feeling. I had a short-short story published in a magazine - online, and doesn't pay, but the editor liked it. It's good to be li...

I couldn't get either sense or feeling from it. Guess I just don't like pink.

it's quite beautiful and profound. I'm just not convinced that it's a poem.

I would have liked the dog's name rather than "my dog". When I think of that drive to the Maritimes, or notice the old leather pouch full of dog leash...

At first I liked it, and got the impression that it's a melancholy reflection on a child with terminal leukemia, his few hungry years gnawing him to d...

First, the person who does feel is in the next room, then he's on the floor above. I get the impression that someone has asked the narrator whether he...

Often by cops, operating within the law. Sure. And maybe in real life people wouldn't behave this way. That's why it's fiction.

We got quite a lot out of this story. It may well be my favourite.

That's why she was hoping he's a smoker. To what ? A trucker whizzing past saw a car pulled over by a cop. Not front-page news, even if he'd ever conn...

One of the motivations is peer approval. The mass market is not very receptive to complex, intellectual literature, and consequently, neither are most...

I just went back to check about the car and she does say "It's his car." when asked for license and registration, and I noticed something else. It's n...

Big empty desert, handy rocks, understaffed local police force, no missing person report, coyotes... His car will be found, a long distance in the wro...

Publications and documents are good (Well, I can hardly say otherwise, can I?) but living is even better. Your group can popularize the projects alrea...

So did I, 40 years ago, when I was offered a co-publishing deal for my first novel. I turned it down and decided to hold out for a better one, even th...

:blush: :blush: :smile:

Quite so! I never read comments before posting my own. Of course, that means some duplication and I may have to do a couple of edits. (I love the edit...

I've reviewed all but three of the stories. I left those out because of either subject matter or style; if I'm put off by the first paragraph, it can'...

Not if you're married to the publisher! Self-publishing was a natural next step to editing and formatting service, and it's so easy now; much easier a...

I didn't care for it. The museum itself was a disappointment - way too much building and build-up for a lot of stairs, a picture gallery and two fairl...

I guess it depends. If he's a known gangster - "one of them" suggests this is the case - taking hi in is no problem. His identity would have to be asc...

I loved it. Beautiful prose; just enough imagery to put the reader inside the scene, inside the situation, not overwhelmed with words. The cop, a tran...

I couldn't rate this story. It is excellent, but enjoyment is not how I can describe my feeling about it. It is a wonderfully polished little gem of s...

It's a story about love. Yes, he wanders off course and gets momentarily lost in intellectual pursuits and a little escapism - who doesn't? But the bo...

Thanks. That was a hard sprint from last October. It's the sequel to one that was walk across many landscapes over some 40 years. Weird shit, this wri...

I get the point, sort of, but wonder why it took so long to get there. Found the prose too expository and matter-of-fact, with no dialogue or emotion ...

Besides the tiny flaws in word use that other have mentioned, there are two wee discrepancies of detail: How can he or she, still living in the same h...

He's got a beard... and I think you're reaching. Shall we explore the causes of this association? How does the picture make you feel?

So, he's imbued the program with his idea of her sex and age...? OK, still not working for me as a story.

So, it's all in Jake's head? No AI sentience. If so, it's big letdown, because that was the only interesting issue in the story; his psyche was never ...

I'm fine with internal monologue, musings, etc. The situation is plausible enough, minus a couple of small points of order: Why didn't they have the o...

So the mystery of why they are doing well while everyone around them is starving and thirsty is never solved or explained. Who the attackers were is n...

Yes, he might; he lived exclusively on mac cheese and wieners* in the last year before moving out and I don't recall a problem with corn; it's yellow....

I like the premise and the two characters. I particularly appreciated Jake's loyalty to his creature, but I found the conversation confusing. I get th...

You never met my kid.

I recommend a warm afternoon, in a hammock next to a table with a cool drink on it, sans umbrella, since you won't want your attention diverted from t...

At your service, My Liege! I've been busy with the final proofreading and formatting (*ugh*) of my very last and biggest novel and didn't want further...

Nevertheless, we have those values, hold those convictions and make those judgments. Society cannot function in an ethical void. If he has to 'intone'...

It's not only Jesus who is subject to individual interpretations; the OT is full of horrible stuff that believers explain away as metaphor, allegory o...

And a great deal of harm. Hoomons at work and play as usual.

Every human being on the planet. We punish one another enough for perceived immorality; the least we can do is acknowledge one another's moral compass...

The selfish gene wear blinkers. (But we're damn destructive in the short term, too.)

I suppose one could find a constructive use for mace and the guillotine, but I'm hard-put to imagine what that is. My contention was that it's not one...

Not all by itself, but it's a major contributor. Other causes have been imperialism, superstition, technological disparity and climate. Of course, but...

Exactly! What's the great big glaring role-model? Jesus - and to a lesser degree, all the martyrs, compared to which the self-flagellation and mortifi...

We can only judge from our own perspective, according to our own standards. So can the aliens. In the sense that we can't judge the god's decisions as...

Does it need to be a Big Omni type of god? Let's admit that we know nothing of life on other planets, and so not assume that one god is in charge of t...

Their own language and at least one other, including grammar and literature. Arithmetic > mathematics, as far as their ability takes each student. Sci...